I will be participating in the Analytics Executive Symposium being run on June 26th in Chicago by the International Institute for Analytics of which I am a faculty member.

The Analytics Executive Symposium is a unique and professional gathering of analytics champions who come together to hear and discuss the latest findings and research in analytics. The Symposium will feature the bi-annual meetings of IIA’s Analytics Research Councils (ARCs) for the Health Care and Retail industries. Special focuses on Analytics in the Enterprise will also be featured.
Please note: this is a by-invitation-only forum for IIA members.

Register here if you are an IIA member. To join contact the folks at IIA here.

I recently participated in an article in the Teradata magazine - A Beautiful, Cloudy Forecast – based on our research on predictive analytics in the cloud. As the article says:

The basic value proposition of predictive analytics in the cloud is clear: Organizations can make predictive analytics more scalable, more pervasive and easier to deploy. For many of the challenges organizations face in their journey to becoming analytic organizations, cloud-based solutions have much to offer.

Companies interested in this area can get all the details from this survey on our company site – decisionmanagementsolutions.com/predictive-analytics-in-the-cloud-survey-results. If you want any help getting started with predictive analytics in the cloud, drop us a line at info@decisionmanagementsolutions.com.

I am speaking on Business Friendly Data Mining on Day 2 (June 26) of Predictive Analytics World Chicago at 10:40am CT.

Organizations that are more sophisticated with analytics are more likely to be top business performers. But too often there are gaps in understanding between business, IT and analytics teams. Gaps in building business understanding lead to analytic models that don’t have business value and gaps in implementation lead to models that take months or years to adopt or never get adopted at all. Wasted effort and “good” models that just sit on the shelf gathering dust are the result. In this session, James Taylor outlines some proven techniques for improving business/analytics/IT collaboration, clarifying data mining goals and enabling rapid deployment of models in systems.

Register for Predictive Analytics World here.

I am speaking at an event in Dresden, Germany on Decision Management (details here) on June 7 17:00 – 19:00 CET. I will be giving an introduction to Decision Management.

Business processes and business logic are two sides of same coin. Without an explicit consideration of business rules, process models can be incomplete and topics such as “compliance” is not considered.  In addition to the representation of business rules, we need above all a methodology to collect and manage the business logic.  This will be a relaxed discussion on the topic of “Decision Management”. I will cover why organizations need to understand and analyze decisions and point out the possibilities that come from the introduction of a systematic management approach to decisions.

The number of participants is limited so please register by e-mail to info@enterprise-design.eu - It is a first-come, first served event! 

I am giving a webinar with Gagan Saxena (@Gagan_S), CIO of Apple Vacations on A New Approach to Business Design at Apple Vacations on May 22, 2012 at 10:00 am PT, 1:00 pm ET.

Gagan and I will present how how Apple Vacations applied Decision Management to redesign the consumer experience and create a “smart system” that would bring the new capabilities of business rules management, analytics, big data, predictive modeling, complex event processing and natural language processing into the organization.

I hope you can join us. Register here.

There’s still time to register for the 2-day workshop in Europe next month. This covers the essentials of Decision Management, the effective use of business rules and Business Rules Management Systems and the role of analytics:

• Berlin – June 4/5 – Register here.

The class covers:

• An introduction to Decisions and Decision Management
• Categorizing and identifying decisions
• Characteristics and design of decisions
• Managing decision logic
• The role of decisions in systems
• Getting started and first steps

Hope to see you in Berlin.

The TIBCO Spotfire blog had a nice post – Tips to Get Your Organization Ready for Big Data – and it struck me that these tips were all good advice for someone trying to do “Big Decision Management” – that is Decision Management with Big Data. I would add a few comments though:

Collaboration is always important in Decision Management and when Big Data involved the usual three legged stool (business, IT, analytics) is even more important than ever. The increased IT risks of Big Data (new technology, skills shortage) as well as the need to do more advanced analytics (not just reporting) against big data to turn all that data into something actionable make collaboration critical.

The advice to start with a focused project is also good. I like to say BWTDIM – begin with the decision in mind – and this is particularly important when adopting new technologies and managing technology risk. This focus also helps determine if you need big data to solve your problem by beginning with the problem (of making a better decision). It also ensures that you know what the value proposition for new Big Data technologies will be if you do adopt them as you will be able to say that they will specifically help improve this decision which in turn impacts these metrics/objectives (something you should always know about a decision before beginning a decision management project).

Finally I have a small tweak to the second of the 5 specific tips listed in the blog post. I completely agree that business needs should drive big data adoption. But what does this really mean? I believe it means that the business has identified that big data can help improve a specific decision. Of course this implies that you know what the decision is, you know why it matters, you know what a good one looks like and can measure the results. BWTDIM!

I have been going to IBM IMPACT for a couple of years now. This year’s event is just around the corner – it starts on Sunday – and I am particularly excited about this one. While it’s not the first at which I have spoken, nor the first where there have been sessions on Decision Management, it does feel like the first where Decision Management will play a real role.

For instance, the Forbes Mini Main Tent will feature a Decision Management Solutions client talking about Decision Management as a strategic tool and he and I will then co-present on From business rules to decision-centric organization. On Tuesday I will be discussing Decision Management Trends with a great customer panel and then signing Decision Management Systems at the bookstore right after. Plus there are a ton of customer case studies and other sessions focused on Decision Management. In between I hope to hear some about IBM’s vision for Decision Management (among other things), catch up with the latest product demos and meet a bunch of folks working in the space. If you are planning to come, please drop by one of the sessions and say hi – I always like to meet blog readers.

Looking forward to IMPACT as I was, it was cool to be named an IBM Champion for Websphere.  I’d like to thank Jean Pommier and Ale Campioli  for nominating me – much appreciated! IBM says that they award the status to people who make a contribution to the broader community by blogging about their specialist subject (as I have been doing for years here at JTonEDM and previously elsewhere), by writing books (like Smart (Enough) Systems, the first book on Decision Management that Neil Raden and I wrote back in 2007 or Decision Management Systems, my new book), contributing thought leadership articles and white papers (see our library on decisionmanagementsolutions.com or check out the Decision Management Systems Platform Technologies report) and so on.

Being an IBM Champion is not a paid position but I certainly appreciate it as a nice way for IBM to recognize those who evangelize a topic and try to move the discussion forward.

The early bird pricing on our 2-day workshop in Europe expires this week. This workshop cover the essentials of Decision Management, the effective use of business rules and Business Rules Management Systems and the role of analytics:

• Berlin – June 4/5 – Register here.

The class covers:

• An introduction to Decisions and Decision Management
• Categorizing and identifying decisions
• Characteristics and design of decisions
• Managing decision logic
• The role of decisions in systems
• Getting started and first steps

Hope to see you in Berlin. Book now and get the early bird price!

It used to be that analytics were applied in batch, updating the database with a score or customer segment based on yesterday’s data.

It used to be that these models could take months to implement, so that the models themselves were based on data that might be months out of date.

It used to be that analytic teams could just produce scores or other predictive models and leave it to someone else to worry about how they might be used and integrated into operational systems.

But today’s world is real-time. Customers want answers in real-time. This means companies must decide in real-time using up to the minute data. And the world is changing fast so models need to be built with up to date data and rapidly deployed to keep them fresh and accurate.

Organizations need a decision management approach and a real-time infrastructure to take full advantage of predictive analytics:

1. Discover the operational decisions that make a difference to business objectives
2. Rapidly build analytic models that can influence these decisions
3. Wrap these analytics with the rules of their business – regulations, policies, best practices
4. Deploy these analytics quickly and accurately to their operational infrasturcture and hook them up to real-time data

Come to our webinar with Zementis on May 3 to learn more and see a live demo of their real-time infrastructure. Register here.